MTG Character Profile: Lavinia

This is the third in a series of profiles of major
characters in the story of Ravnica
Allegiance. In this article, we’ll investigate the career of Lavinia,
an arrester from the Azorius Senate who became one of the most important people
on Ravnica.

Joining the Senate

Lavinia is all about making sure the law is upheld and justice is done. She grew up in Ravnica’s Ninth District, not far from Azorius territory. After seeing her brother tortured by Rakdos and Dimir agents, she became an arrester to try to prevent similar crimes.

After a few years of work as an arrester, she became interested in Jace Beleren while investigating a suspicious fire on his property. Her supervisors told her to stop investigating the conspiracy surrounding him (which only made her more interested), but there was nothing she could do to get around their rules without losing her job. Instead, she began researching the strange gates that had begun to appear throughout the city.

The
gates were part of the Implicit Maze that
was created when the Guildpact was broken. The winner of a race through the
Maze would become the new ruler of Ravnica and the living embodiment of the new
Guildpact. Each guild chose a maze runner to represent itself, knowing that
whoever won would give control of the city to their own guild.

Lavinia was chosen as Azorius’s maze runner, and Jace was chosen to oversee the race and report the result. To everyone’s surprise, Jace himself was named the winner of the race, since the maze runners were too busy fighting with each other to actually complete the Maze.

The
Living Guildpact

Once appointed as the Living Guildpact, Jace assembled a council of members of all the guilds to help him rule the city. Lavinia joined that council, but soon found herself in the role of Jace’s aide. It became her responsibility to run the city while Jace was not on Ravnica.

In Guilds of Ravnica, Vraska assassinated Isperia, the leader of the Azorius Senate. Isperia was replaced by Dovin Baan, a planeswalker from Kaladesh who is secretly working for Nicol Bolas. As the Azorius guildmaster, Dovin has begun cracking down on the people of Ravnica with harsh new tactics. He has forced Senate members to wear tracking devices and orders mages to predict crimes in order to arrest people before they commit those crimes.

Lavinia has refused to accept Dovin as guildmaster because of his unethical policies. By the time we see her in Ravnica Allegiance, she’s gone undercover to hide from her own guild and hopefully find a way to overthrow Dovin. If anyone can come up with a plan to restore the rule of law, it’s her.

Know Your Rights

The following decklist tells the story of Lavinia’s career as an Azorius arrester. Its goal is to slow the opponent down using Detain, the Azorius mechanic from Return to Ravnica block. The deck also casts powerful flying creatures to bring the opponent to justice.

Mara started playing Magic in 2015 and is a big fan of Magic‘s story and flavor. Her current favorite decks are her Gishath, Sun’s Avatar Commander deck and her Niv-Mizzet, Parun Brawl deck, but she’s always up for a brewing challenge.